Absolutely. Look at Canada, pre Justin Trudeau (love him or hate him), Canada was taking in less refuges. After we voted for another government that was more into being a welcoming society absolutely it changed. Voting for a more progressive, socially accountable and inclusive government may not fix everything right away. But it definitely starts to move in the right direction. Voting is the single most important thing you should do to affect the outcome if your government if you live in a democratic country!
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She has to pay her monthly 370$, which over the course of the year is $4,440. She must also spend $7,800 before her plan covers anything. After that, the plan might cover her costs. Might, because there is often a percentage split after the deductible is met - say 80/20 where she is still responsible for 20% of the costs. That 80/20 split usually goes away at some point - called the ‘total out of pocket’ for a plan year. And if your medical costs are obtained at a place your insurance company doesn’t have a contract with, they can be considered “out of network” and not count toward those totals!
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I’ve been getting my asthma medication, Advair, from Canada Pharmacy for years now at about a third of the price I’d have to pay at my local pharmacy.
Ain’t dead yet.
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That’s a bit like the pizza boy telling me there are worries about the supply of pepperoni. By and large, pharmacists are employees of corporate chain outlets. They rarely do supply chain management. While privately owned pharmacies may see stock overages or shortages, this is rarely a major issue in a properly managed international supply chain.
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(Apologies if your comment is sarcasm that slipped past my snark detector.)
So we selfish Americans with diabetes should just—god, it’s so simple!—vote the right way, and the health insurance shitshow will be taken care of.
And while we wait for all of that voting to fix everything, we should just find comfy corners to compliantly die in.
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Wow. That’s special and surprising. My answer was generic for all the drugs Americans buy in Canada. Getting the script is normally a bit of a pain in the ass, I gather, and figured the “caravan” was mostly about sharing a doctor to smooth the discussion with a Canuck doc. No wonder they’re doing this if its that easy.
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What if a visitor to Canada runs out of their insulin supply due to unforeseen circumstances? My guess would be that there is a provision to allow a non-Canadian to purchase some amount of insulin with a non-Canadian prescription.
ETA: Or, as @teknocholer points out, no prescription is necessary.
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I think that assumes scarcity that doesn’t really exist. Insulin is pretty easy to produce if you have the right equipment, and there are literally thousands of the right kind of bioreactors, globally.
Also, the point is that the insulin that is being sold in Canada at a reasonable price is being sold at a profit at that price. It’s exactly the same insulin that is being sold in the US. Re-route the insulin in the US to Canada, and the drug company is still making money on it. There’s no subisidizing involved.
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It’s not some individual pharmacist, it’s the trade bodies of pharmacists who made the warning.
The people who directly oversee the drug supply chain in both countries are warning about the pretty obvious danger of a supply chain problem, if the people controlling the supply chain don’t know the size of the user population.
And if your pizza boy was telling you there was a potential problem getting pepperoni on your next pizza, because it helped you live, I don’t think you’d quibble so much.
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That’s not how the supply chain works. Canada doesn’t buy 10,000 kg of insulin, and if someone needs another 1 mg, well, they’re SOL. There’s a whole production and distribution network that constantly adapts production and distribution to changing demands, both in terms of quantity and geographical demand. It’s not like the whole system breaks down when Tim Horton’s opens 5 new stores in Medicine Hat and insulin demand there doubles.
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That concerns me about as much as a union of pizza delivery people warning about pepperoni shortages.
Delivery boy, girl, or person, I would certainly quibble. Even more in fact because they are not a good source of information on pepperoni supply chain management.
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I’m making the point that there should be no difference between either kinds of refugees. But you notice how if you are American going to Canada as a “health care” refugee you are some kind of hero… but if you are fleeing from South America you are considered a blight. I’m calling out the fact that there is hypocrisy here.
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Looks like you don’t know how supply chain works either. You make based on current supply and demand. Since we all know that insulin has a finite shelf life you cannot just make hordes of it and put it into storage. The pharmaceutical companies in Canada will base it off of information with Canadian citizens requiring insulin and manufacturing will then base their production off of that.
You cannot just say, “consistently adapts” unless you are getting real, actual numbers. I don’t think most of these Americans that are coming over are declaring what they are actually doing so that Stats Canada can get that information.
I’m glad you’re an expert at supply chain because I always thought that to run something efficiently you need actual data to pull from and not arbitrary guesses from a random spike in demand from a source that isn’t quantifiable because the customer base isn’t captured as a metric.
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Everything has a finite shelf life. But insulin’s is at least 18 months, based on the packaging in my fridge right now.
Great, don’t be worried.
But I don’t know why you think the people who make the actual decisions about how much of a drug is available at any place a person could get it, that you think those are the people to dismiss about whether there could be dangers of shortages at the consumer level? They’re warning about a stocking issue, and they do the stocking, not the supplier.
“My store could never run out of stuff, because there’s plenty in the warehouse (or conveniently available in another country). Please wait ten minutes while I get that for you.”
Which is the opposite of what I said. In addition, the original article did not portray the Americans with diabetes as heroes, just as people trying to get by.
Perhaps you could explain whose hypocrisy you are calling out here.
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And some, I assume, are good people.
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So I know some people involved in one of these caravans. They have always voted for universal healthcare and volunteered on campaigns. They can not afford insulin under the current US system and will die without it. What is your preferred solution for them, death or the easy way? Even if you assume the best case scenario for the next election, two years is a long time for a type 1 diabetic to go without insulin.
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Cool so you’re ok with taking the medication away from ppl that need it in Canada. Ok. Give me a moral high ground argument when your country stops cruel punishment to other refugees.
Honestly I’m fine with them needing treatment but the irony between what these ppl are doing and what the US is doing to families that are also refugees is barbaric.
But it’s cool. You summed it up succinctly. It’s about American life to you and none other.
Everyone who needs insulin should get it.
I don’t think Canada is preparing to build a wall, and the only things people have proposed are that the US fix their self-created insulin price problem.
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